Culcheth Chess Club Blog

Apologies are in order to the followers of this blog for the lack of an update after recent matches. A combination of one contributor being overseas and another’s laptop being out of commission was the reason for no reports being published of late. Now that I have a working laptop again hopefully normal service will now be resumed!

When we left things the A team had just been held to a draw by Division 1 newcomers Skelmersdale…

The following Wednesday it was our B team’s turn to welcome Skelmersdale, this time the away team left with all the points. Despite a fine effort by Keith Maudsley who played an excellent game against Paul Massey’s Colle system. Keith has kindly annotated this one which can be enjoyed below:

Over the past half dozen or so years the key fixture in the WDCL calendar has been the clash between Culcheth A and Atherton. The sides met for the first time this season on 7th November.

A slightly nervy match ensued with both sides likely aware of the importance of the fixture. The top three boards each played out to a draw leaving boards 4 and 5 to decide the result. On this occasion Andy Coe and Ilya Dubov both played excellent games which gave us the match win. I did take a picture of both of their scoresheets with the intention to publish these games here. Sadly however I seem to have managed to delete this from my phone over the past few weeks! Ilya / Andy if you would still like these games to be published perhaps you can provide me with a copy of your scoresheets and I can later add these wins into an updated version of this blog post!

This takes us up to more recent times where on the 15th November we had two home fixtures Culcheth A V Northwich A in division 1, whilst at the same time welcoming WDCL newcomers Eccles for their first visit to our club in Culcheth C V Eccles in WDCL division 3.

Our A team established a quick decisive 3-0 lead from boards 3, 4 and 5 which earned us an early victory in this fixture. Northwich were missing a few players meaning some of their less experienced players had been thrown in lower down. The top two boards were hotly contested however. Ian Dutton played a fine game against the talented James Harrison, James was not to know that he had played into a position Ian was having for the third time in a month! This allowed Ian to emerge with a good opening and he went onto convert.

Damian’s game against Richard was a close affair where in the end Richard was to lose on time, in a complicated but not necessarily worse endgame.

Boards 1 & 2 from the Culcheth V Northwich fixture

On the same evening Eccles edged a close match against our C team 1.5-3.5. Phil Dawson has kindly provided his game which was our only win from this match.

Culcheth had three fixtures last week, testing our player and indeed equipment resources to the limit. Here is how it all went down.

On the 17th October Culcheth took a trip to new WDCL entrants Lymm for a division 3 fixture. Tough games were had with perhaps the highlight fixture being Jonathan Miller’s game below against our much missed former member Bryan Slater, who now plays for Lymm as its closer for him. Jonathan’s commentary on that game below. Notible mentions to Vince who achieved a fine draw against Lymm’s young star Jake Humphreys and Nick Burriss for a good win on board 1.

Just a day later Culcheth had a double header fixture, the A team were at home against last season’s division 2 winners Skelmersdale. Whilst the Richard Furness side also faced Northwich at the same time and date.

This stretched our resources to the extent that two of the old analog clocks had to be dusted down and brought out for use!

The A team were missing a few players meaning that Damian had a decision to make as to whom to bring in on board 5. Should he go for the experienced Nick Burriss? Or a rising star in James Short?

In the end the decision to give Nick the nod seemed to pay off as both Nick and Andy Coe won their games quickly giving us a 2-0 lead. Nick’s game can be played through below.

Damian seemed to have built up an advantage however Gareth Ellis is a tough nut to crack and Gareth managed to hold on for the draw in a position where both players were unable to avoid a perpetual check to their kings.

Paul Stanley from Skelmersdale played a fine game on board 1 against Ian Dutton, the game went deep into a time scramble where both players had rook and 1 pawn left. Paul’s pawn crucially proved further advanced which allowed him to get the win 2.5-1.5

Finally Ilya’s game looked to be headed for a draw but for a most unfortunate bishop blunder likely brought about by the late hour, this mistake prematurely ended the game and resulted in a tied match 2.5-2.5 well done to Skelmersdale!

Finally at the top end of the room the Richard Furness side took on a rather strong looking Northwich side.

James made a better job then Damian did as Black recently against Adrian Breakspeares Colle system, the result was a draw on top board which was an excellent result by James against a strong player.

Dan was outgraded by over 300 points against former League president Richard Betts, he put up a good fight however but Richard emerged triumphant on board 2.

Phil Dawson has been playing excellent chess lately however on this occasion he was to lose against newcomer Liam Whittaker.

Then finally Daniel Anstess in just his second game for us managed an excellent draw on bottom board.

After fielding a far from full strength team in our opening fixture, our A team side had more familiar faces this time around with only Tom Quilter missing from our full strength line up.

Our opposition Winwick have been fighting relegation in the WDCL top tier for the past few seasons, they themselves were missing their regular board 1 Simon Myles.

As the match began Ilya arrived a few minutes late as is customary for him due to having to travel to the match straight from work. Personally after a day at work, playing chess afterwards is something I always struggle to do well, but it did not seem to affect Ilya as he quickly set about gaining the upper hand in his game.

The first result of the night came on the top board where Ian Dutton, playing the second game of his latest ‘comeback’, was against Simeon Sakic. From an offbeat Sicilian Ian stated afterwards that he was not entirely satisfied with the opening position and therefore offered an early draw. This was accepted by Sakic, 0.5 – 0.5

The next two results followed about half an hour later. Ilya on board 5 was facing Ben O’Rourke. From what I saw of the game Ilya managed to obtain a French advanced type pawn structure as Black but without the usual bad light squared Bishop. From such a solid positional foundation he proceeded to outplay his opponent winning a number of pawns and soon after his opponent resigned while still in the middlegame 0.5 – 1.5.

On board three Damian was facing Dave Stuttard. Dave had improved upon his opening from our last encounter but nevertheless I felt that Black had gained a slight advantage after the opening few moves. Dave has a keen eye for a tactic and in the early middlegame he was tempted to try a double piece sacrifice in an attempt to open up Damian’s still uncastled King. Unfortunately for White his position was nowhere near ready for this sacrifice as most of his pieces were still undeveloped. By the time the position below emerged Black had an overwhelming material advantage, Dave played on until Black had re-coordinated and then resigned. 0.5-2.5.

Stuttard V McCarthy after 15.e6+

These results left us just requiring a further half point to secure the match.

On board 2 we had Marek as White against Richard Clissold and on board 4 Rob Furness also had the White pieces against Ken Johnson.

These last two boards went on well past ten o clock, Marek seemed under some pressure in the dynamic position in the image below.

Robert’s game looked like a typical example of the pressure the English opening can apply as after winning the A file for is Rook and Queen Rob began probing for a weakness. In response Black needs to really have kingside attacking chances in his favour, but Ken’s attack seemed to be a long way behind.

As both games neared their conclusion Marek’s game seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. Clissold had managed to win a pawn and force off the exchange of all the heavy pieces. For a brief moment in the position below watching I wondered if Marek could even win with Bxf6!?

Bxf6 played in the game…

and indeed after Bxf6 it would have been good enough for the win if Clissold responded with Kxf6… When after Kd7 White will be the one promoting the e pawn.

However seeing the danger Clissold instead played the calm Kxe6 which gave Black a winning advantage as White was then unable to stop one of the black pawns from promoting…

Unfortunately it seems there is no defending this endgame for White.

Whether or not Rob was fully aware of Marek’s predicament on board 2 I am not sure, however he was undoubtably slightly better but Ken had stoically defended his pawn weaknesses to the point that Rob now had under two minutes on his clock. Given the new WDCL adopted time controls this is not quite the dire situation that it was of previous seasons (we now get a 10 second increment per move) to the relief of his Captain Rob offered the draw which when accepted by Ken got us over the line for the win.

Marek resigned his position shortly after this to give us a narrow win of 3-2

A very early league table